Afalava, lesson learned, returns to lineup

CORVALLIS -- Senior safety Al Afalava is back in the starting lineup at Oregon State, thankful to be on the squad after a drunken-driving incident last winter that nearly derailed his career.

Afalava is considered one of the biggest hitters in the Pacific-10 Conference. But it's the hit he put on a Corvallis city bus shelter Feb. 9 while behind the wheel that reverberated beyond the playing field for weeks. The fact he left the scene made it worse.

Ross William Hamilton/The OregonianOregon State's Al Afalava has developed from a safety and special teams star as a freshman to one of the Pacific-10 Conference's hardest hitters. After serving a one-game suspension for drunken driving, he'll be back in the lineup Saturday at Penn State.

"It was a stupid mistake," Afalava said. "I got phone calls the next morning, people telling me, 'Man, you're all over the newspapers.' ... I was a little ashamed to come out."

The incident shocked Beavers coach Mike Riley, who suspended him for last week's season opener at Stanford.

Riley had endured a nightmarish run of off-field incidents with his team in 2004 and 2005, and he could have kicked Afalava off the team -- as he had previously with Joe Rudulph, Coye Francies, Patrick Fuller and others.

But Riley chose to give one of his best players a second chance, and a contrite Afalava will start Saturday when Oregon State (0-1) makes its longest road trip of the season, meeting No. 19 Penn State (1-0) in State College, Pa.

"I took my punishment, I learned from it, and hopefully nothing like that will ever happen again," said Afalava, who described facing his wife and his parents with the news just as difficult as facing his head coach.

"Just thank the man upstairs that nobody got hurt, and I didn't get hurt," Afalava said.

Riley knows the Nittany Lions face their own off-field issues.

This summer, a scathing ESPN "Outside the Lines" report noted that since 2002, 46 Penn State players have faced 163 criminal charges.

The report was a black eye for Penn State's program, and an embarrassment to 81-year-old Joe Paterno, the Nittany Lions' coach.

Riley said he cringes when he hears about another school's athletes getting into trouble. He knows it could just as easily be Oregon State drawing news coverage for all the wrong reasons.

"Every coach is susceptible. No one is immune," Riley said. "You're dealing with 100 or more young kids. Even adults don't make good decisions all the time."

In just the past 12 months, there have been incidents at Penn State, Iowa, Colorado, Louisville, Virginia Tech, Kentucky, Tulane, Miami and fellow Pac-10 member Washington State, where the Seattle Times reported that 25 players had been arrested or charged with offenses that carried possible jail time.

"I think all of us are under the gun," Paterno said in August. "I'm under the gun to stay on top of things. It's a question of who you are, and what you stand for. If you want to walk out of that tunnel, you want to have people cheering for you and you want people to respect you."

Penn State's recent off-field troubles don't change Riley's perception of the Nittany Lions' program or his admiration for Paterno.

"Somebody says, look at this school, having all these problems," Riley said, "and I just (shudder) because in the blink of an eye, something can happen to you."

Riley has been criticized for being too forgiving with some players in the past. But when off-field incidents began occuring with alarming regularity more than three years ago, OSU came up with an athletic department code of conduct that specified punishments for various offenses.

"We had problems, big problems, and it hurt the university," Riley said.

With some offenses, he had no choice.

"Every person on the team knew what was going to happen with Coye," Riley said of Francies. "Anything involving a gun, you're gone."

Still, Riley thought Francies was a good person -- as well as an excellent defensive back and kick returner -- who made one bad judgment. Based on that, he didn't hesitate to recommend Francies to San Jose State coach Dick Tomey.

This season, Francies is one of the Spartans' best athletes and a key member of the team. The gun possession charge against him was eventually dropped.

"I told (Tomey) exactly what happened, told him I thought Coye was a heck of a guy, and I think it's worked out OK," Riley said.

With Afalava, Riley said, there was leeway to punish him, but keep him on the team.

"We are not in the elimination business," he said. "I want guys to come here and succeed and I try to go the extra mile. ... It's important for us to make decisions that go above and beyond (the code of conduct) based on the individual. And in my world, this was Al's first glitch. I was not going to (kick him off)."